Yesterday the People’s Republic of China turned seventy-six. Not a round anniversary, perhaps, yet important enough to be celebrated across the nation. In my book The Middle Kingdom: A Journey through China’s History (reissued last autumn), I recount the historic day of October 1, 1949:
Beijing was dressed for a festival. In the Fragrant Hills outside the city, Li Zhisui awoke at five in the morning. The air was clear and sharp, the foliage in the surrounding woods glowing in all the colors of autumn. Those who lived there enjoyed the privilege of beginning the day with quiet walks along shaded paths, accompanied by birdsong.
Li was twenty-nine, a doctor by training. Born in Beijing, he could rightly call himself a Beijing-ren — a Beijing native. His great-grandfather had been imperial physician, his grandfather a doctor and pharmacist. At thirteen, Li had moved with his mother to Suzhou, farther south, where he attended a Christian middle school and was baptized.
Later, he studied medicine and became a surgeon. In 1948, as the civil war raged, Li traveled to Hong Kong and found work as a ship’s doctor with the Australian Oriental Company. Docked in Sydney, he picked up a newspaper announcing that Beijing had fallen to the communists. Weeks later, a letter arrived from his elder brother, a convinced communist:
“China lacks qualified doctors. The new government can offer you good work, and our family will be reunited.”
Life outside China was comfortable, and Li earned well. Yet he chose to return, determined “to serve the people.” In the Fragrant Hills, however, he saw few ordinary citizens. Just a stone’s throw away lived the country’s new leaders, Mao at their head, not yet installed in the walled compound of Zhongnanhai beside the Forbidden City.
The Fragrant Hills were part of the Western Hills northwest of Beijing, a retreat since the twelfth century. Here, among cliffs and evergreens, ancient temples rested in silence, and the pagoda of Zongjing Monastery, built in 1780, rose toward the autumn sky like a tower of hope.
Li was appointed physician at the special hospital for the new leadership. Later he would become Mao’s personal doctor. But on this day he was free, and together with others he was driven by truck to Tiananmen Square. By seven o’clock it was already thronged with people. The new rulers had worked feverishly to enlarge it: old buildings torn down, mulberry trees uprooted, red banners stretched between rooftops, and the new flag of the People’s Republic fluttering from freshly raised poles.
Li was proud and elated, and all the more so when Mao and the other leaders appeared on the Tiananmen rostrum at precisely 10:00 a.m.
“The effect was electric. Mao had been my hero ever since my brother first told me he was China’s Messiah, and this was my first glimpse of my savior. Though I worked in the Fragrant Hills, so near Mao’s residence, I had never seen him before. He was then fifty-six, tall, healthy, and solid. His face was ruddy, his hair thick and black, his forehead high and broad.”
Mao himself had worried about this day. What if someone attempted to spoil it with a pistol shot, a grenade, or a homemade bomb? Nothing of the sort occurred.
“Long live Chairman Mao, long live Chairman Mao!”
The shouts thundered across the square. Everything was carefully orchestrated: most of the crowd were party members under strict instructions. The Tiananmen Gate, built in the fifteenth century along with the Imperial City, once shone in bright colors, but now was faded and worn.
When the chanting subsided, Mao stepped to the microphone and, in a high, strained voice, proclaimed:
“We, the 475 million people of China, have risen. Our future will forever be bright.”
With his next breath, he declared the People’s Republic of China established. He coughed between sentences, and those who had expected a stirring speech were sorely disappointed. The new savior had little to say, beyond reading out the names of the new government. It was the first and last time he addressed the people from Tiananmen Square.
The band of the People’s Liberation Army struck up the new national anthem, The March of the Volunteers, long used as a revolutionary song, now adopted by the entire nation. Tanks with red stars rumbled across the square, followed by trucks hauling artillery, infantry in long lines, special units and guards, detachments of armed peasants, and even columns of peasants dancing.
Beijing was once again China’s capital, though it had not been inevitable. Mao might have chosen Xi’an, home of many dynasties, or Shanghai, with its large industrial proletariat, or Nanjing, seat of the defeated Nationalist regime. But Xi’an was too far west and too ancient, Shanghai tainted by imperialist aggression, Nanjing synonymous with misrule.
Mao had spent most of his life in the field. Apart from Changsha, capital of Hunan, Beijing was the only city he had ever lived in. He knew it, if not intimately, then well enough. Thirty years earlier, as a student, he had slept on a wide kang bed with seven fellow Hunan students.
“The conditions were dreadful,” he later recalled. “Where I lay, I could scarcely breathe. Whenever I wanted to turn, I warned the others. Yet I was captivated by the beauty of the city, its parks and its ancient palaces. I saw plum trees blossom white while ice still covered Beihai Lake. I saw willows heavy with ice crystals leaning over the water, and I remembered the Tang poet Cen Can, who wrote that Beihai’s winter trees looked like ‘ten thousand peach trees in bloom.’ Beijing’s countless trees filled me with wonder and admiration.”
Beijing’s location, too, mattered. It lay in the north, near Manchuria, linked by rail to the Soviet Union, its high walls providing the security the new rulers prized.
Amid the jubilation, it was easy to overlook the other leaders on the balcony — Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Dong Biwu, Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi. Among the stiff ranks stood a lone woman, Song Qingling, widow of Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the 1912 Republic. Mao wanted her there as a token of the nation’s “democratic forces.” Her presence carried immense symbolic weight.
The Song family had been among the richest in China. Most had left before the communist victory; only Song Qingling remained, praising the Party in public speeches:
“This is the new light of our nation. Freedom dawns and spreads its warmth into every dark, reactionary corner …”
Mao, seeing her usefulness, rewarded her with a place in the new government.
The celebration ended with fireworks. Song Qingling later recalled with pathos: “It was a solemn ceremony that inspired awe. My heart overflowed with happiness.”
Soon after, she was sidelined to a villa far outside the city. In the years to come, Mao would replace the people with the Party, the Party with the Central Committee, the Central Committee with the Politburo, and the Politburo with himself.
As Master Lu had observed of the First Emperor more than two thousand years earlier:
“No fewer than three hundred astrologers gaze at the heavens. Yet these good men, fearful of offending the emperor, dare not tell him the truth, nor point out his errors.”
The leadership moved into Zhongnanhai — the “Central and Southern Seas” — a walled garden beside the Forbidden City, with villas and pavilions shaded by cypress, pine, and willow. At its heart lay two lakes, South and Central, joined by a narrow strip of land known as the Garden of Overflowing Kindness. There Mao took up residence in the Chrysanthemum-scented Studio, once the library of Emperor Qianlong.
“It must have been the best-protected place in the world,” wrote Li Zhisui. Foreign leaders noted the absence of visible guards, but in fact concentric rings of security surrounded Mao. Physically, he was utterly isolated. ‘The emperors lived in Zhongnanhai, so why shouldn’t I?’ he is said to have remarked.”
The imperial style he had adopted now became unmistakable. Still, many continued to worship him — including Li himself:
“Until 1959 I adored him. Yet though I was physically near him at all times, it was as if a mysterious, impenetrable wall separated us. After 1959 I gradually pierced this invisible barrier and came to see Mao’s true face. On stage he was an actor with elaborate makeup; backstage he revealed another face altogether.”
By fate’s irony, Mao, Zhou, and Zhu all died in 1976. Song Qingling passed in 1981, Li Zhisui in 1995. For those who had served the Great Leader closely, survival was never assured. Many perished in prison during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), a bloody campaign that claimed at least a million lives.
But on that October day in 1949, the hopeful crowds returned home, blissfully unaware of the ordeals awaiting them.
…….
For reasons of format, this text has been slightly abridged. My book was first published in 2009 by Cappelen Damm, and has since appeared in several updated editions. The latest edition was released in autumn 2024. You may purchase it in bookstores or online.
